


if given the choice, i would rather have than just be

by Eat_Your_Heart_Out



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 5x19 spoilers, 5x20 spoilers, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, cas also deserved better, charcter death but also he doesn't stay dead so it doesn't count, dealing with grief, dean deserved so much better, finale? who's she never heard of her, superhell? really?, we're done burying our gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:27:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27672013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eat_Your_Heart_Out/pseuds/Eat_Your_Heart_Out
Summary: After the Empty comes and takes its due, Dean finds himself with a hole in his chest, not like grief but like regret.After Jack ascends and Dean realizes he has helped usher in a softer world, he finds himself feeling hope for the first time in a long time.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	if given the choice, i would rather have than just be

**Author's Note:**

> So I watched the finale, analyzed it, and then wrote this in a disappointed, angry, two-day haze. We are done burying our gays.

Cas has said a lot of dumb shit to Dean over the decade that they've known each other but, hands down, the absolute dumbest was " _I know that I can't have what I really want._ "

And, God, why _can't_ he? 

Well, no, Dean knows why. It echoes in his head day and night, replaces his heartbeat, syncs his breathing to it, his meals timed by number of repetitions since he woke up instead of a clock. _"I love you."_

And Dean desperately needs to be _clean_.

Usually, when someone tells him something earth-shattering, it takes a while for it to settle in his head correctly. Its not because he's dumb- he may not be Stanford-smart or Sam-smart, but he is cunning and sometimes that's more important- but because Dean's understanding of the world is like bedrock. Everything he knows is solid and steady, so change is only possible through excessive, shocking force. 

Castiel's confession was a shocking, heady thing that hit Dean with the same force as that semi truck slamming into Baby so long ago. He felt it in his teeth, behind his eyes, in the backs of his calves. Cas said he loved him and Dean's lungs started to feel heavy like Alistair was filling them with sulfur again. He had so badly wanted to say something, _needed_ to, but- 

What _could_ he say? 

Dean jerks himself away from that line of thought. That way lay madness and another night passed out at the library table and his back really cannot take that. He's not as young as he used to be. 

He stumbles down the empty halls to his bathroom. He wishes it wasn't so quiet, wishes the hunters they saved from Apocalypse World were living with them again, but he's also glad he's alone for all intents and purposes- if anyone but Sam and Jack were haunting the bunker with him, he wouldn't be able to allow himself to grieve at all. 

And he _is_ grieving, he thinks. Dean is no stranger to the emotion, but this is different. This is a strange, hesitant thing, scraping at his chest with kitten claws as if it's not certain he should be hurting at all. That, at least, makes perfect sense- death has never quite stuck for Dean and his loved ones, so why would it stick for Cas? A happy death doesn't make the death okay. 

He strips and gets into the shower in a haze. The water is just a little too hot; his scars ache with every movement. Castiel's grace and care had been holding his old bones together for the last decade and all that clawing himself out of graves seems to be catching up with him now. He counts his scars in the mirror afterwards. 

When Dean crawled out of his own grave twelves years ago, it wasn't really him. It wasn't the body that he had been born with, not the one that held his infant brother at four or tried to make Winchester Surprise at seven or took that werewolf's claws to his shoulder at fourteen, but it felt like it. The body that he has now is remade- carefully, lovingly- and Dean didn't realize how _well_ it was made until this moment.

Until its maker was gone. 

Because he still has those ring of scars on his shoulder. The inside of his right arm is still a little gnarled from badly done stitches made by a shaky thirteen-year-old Sam. There's still a scar above his eyebrow from a fight he and Dad had right after Sam left for college. The freckles across his nose and clavicle still appear every single summer in the precise places they always have. 

The only thing that has ever truly healed is the handprint on his shoulder. It still itches from time to time. 

Dean misses the sight of it. 

He throws himself into his bedroom, desperately trying to get away from the mirror before he gives in to the urge to break it, like that will make it show him what he wants. Like it will show him Cas behind his shoulder or the only physical mark his angel ever gave him. 

He snorts angrily, tugging a shirt over his head. _His_ angel? Dean has never owned anything, least of all another living thing. Least of all something so- _pure_. 

Cas, as Dean always saw him, was pure. Despite all the dumb shit he did, Cas and his motivations were simple, easy, understandable above all else- everything he did, he did it for Dean. 

Dean shakes himself, finishes dressing, wanders into the kitchen for coffee to clear his head and then into the bunker and out into the clear grey morning. Sam is still asleep, attesting to his own grief with the late hour. Jack is a ghost as always, unseen until he wants to be. Dean stands in the weak light and breathes in the thin, still air. He's not even sure Chuck left birds on Earth with them. 

He shivers; it's cold now and he needs his jacket, but he can't bear to put it on. He saw it out of the corner of his eye as he was leaving his room earlier- it's filthy and torn and on the shoulder there's that mark. He can't wash that jacket, can't erase Cas's bloody handprint. Not again. 

He also can't make himself wear it. 

Here's the thing: the bedrock is crumbling. While Sam is attempting to save the world, get the girl, and find the good ending for everyone, Dean is just trying to build himself back up. He feels unmoored now for maybe the first time. There are no people to save, no monsters to hunt in this story- there's just an infinitely cruel God and an empty world and a driving, desperate beat in his head. 

_"I love you."_

Castiel _knew_ Dean. He knew the map of his veins, knew the nightmares that kept him up, knew the atrocities he had committed happily in Hell. Being known wasn't so bad at all when it was Cas who was doing the knowing and somehow in the intervening years between that physical Hell and this mental one, Dean has forgotten what it's like to be alone in his head, to be unknown. It feels strange to let his mind wander and not think of the angel down the hall, strange to know just thinking his name won't make him appear. 

Still, Dean tries. _Cas_ , he thinks. There is silence and he knows he is _alone_ but he adds, _Cas, I need you._

The first time Dean prayed, it was beside his brother's hospital bed. He didn't go to the chapel downstairs in the hospital or even leave the room. He didn't call out for God, or strength, or grace. He had thought, _To anyone listening, if my brother dies, I will rip apart the universe to make you pay._

Sam hadn't died and Dean hadn't had to make good on his promise, but he wonders what was listening back then, if anything. When he's in good moods, he thinks nothing was. When he's in bad ones, he thinks it might have been Cas. 

Chuck had called Cas the angel of Thursday, the one with a crack in his chassis. Cas called himself a soldier. Dean thinks he might just have been the thing that brought the Plagues to Egypt and the one that saved the Jewish firstborns all at once. He has always been a dual creature, fearfully dangerous, viciously tender. 

Dean realizes now that love looks different on Castiel. With Lisa, it had looked like sharing her home and letting him into her son's life. With Cas, love looks like blood. It looks like a civil war started for the sake of Dean's free will, like learning to tolerate and then love Sam, someone whose very existence threatened what Cas was created for. It looked like his serenely happy face as the Empty reached for him. 

Dean wants that, that absolute serenity. He wants to be at peace with his decisions, but he hasn't truly been at peace since… since his mom put him to bed the night their house burned down and even then he was fussy, anxiously reaching out for his brother. It was Dean's job to protect him, right? Never let him go, never let him feel alone, never let him let other people make him feel small and, damn, he couldn't even do _that_ right. Sam has grown into someone truly incredible, but Dean's pretty sure it had nothing to do with his parenting skills. 

Dean would like to be sure of things again. He would like to be able to swallow down his anger and be kind. He would like to be the kind of man who decided to coax Amara to help them instead of threatening her, who actually managed to protect Kevin, who raised Ben instead of just putting him in danger. He would like to be whichever version of himself that didn't hold Death's Scythe to Sam's neck with every intention of killing him.

He’d like a lot of things and he isn’t getting a damn one. 

Sam’s head appears around the bunker door, a mass of dark hair and concerned eyes. They clear when he sees Dean and he fully emerges with a blanket and a fresh mug of coffee. “Jack says he felt something,” he says without preamble. Dean had already told him what happened and Sam knows by now how to handle his brother’s dark moods. 

Dean shakes his head. “There’s nothing left, Chuck said so. And I thought he was powered down anyway.”

“I don’t know what to tell you, man,” Sam says with a shrug. “Jack doesn’t waste words.” 

A cutting breeze whips through the valley and Dean shivers again, reaching for the blanket. He wonders how Sam knew he would need it, but sometimes Sam just knows things and Dean pretends not to notice. He takes the coffee too after a moment and Sam takes the empty one without comment. “I guess we got work to do.” 

* * *

On the drive back home, Dean hands shake incessantly. He keeps them on the wheel very carefully and doesn’t look at his brother. Sam always notices too goddamn much and Dean doesn’t want to hear whatever psychoanalytical bullshit spews from his mouth after this new trauma. 

It is trauma, Dean recognizes the taste of it in the back of his mouth, coating his tongue like copper. It feels like Chuck's fists left permanent divots in Dean’s cheekbones. It was such a strange thing to get into a fistfight with God and come out of it feeling clean. Every broken bone and drop of blood felt like another sin struck off the record because this was for the good of humanity. It was to _bring back humanity._ Chuck was cruel, a child breaking all his toys because his favorite action figure's arms didn't bend the same way anymore, and Dean was the father taking the furious, uncoordinated blows to protect everything else. It was fine if it was for a good cause, it was fine if he died because maybe then he would see-

In the end, Dean can't forget the sound of a man he had once honestly called a friend screaming out for him to _wait, guys, please! Please, just rethink-_

One more voice in crying out for mercy he doesn’t have, one more tortured soul to add to a very long list. 

He wonders if he was telling the truth when he told Chuck that he wasn’t the same man he was. Just because he doesn’t torture in Hell anymore doesn’t mean he isn’t still capable of atrocity, culpable for them. 

Jack is will be a kinder, softer God and Dean hopes that that means a kinder, softer world, but where does that leave him? The closer he gets to home with an empty backseat and a grown Sammy in his passenger seat, the more Dean feels like a relic of a passing age. 

Where do soldiers go when it’s time to stop fighting?

He could get a job, maybe. He’d liked working well enough when he was with Lisa and being in one place was nice, but maybe not in an office this time. There’s a struggling mechanic’s shop in town that he could apply to just for something to do. He could even resurrect the Roadhouse for all the new hunters with all the time he sees stretching out before him. Dean thinks he might learn to like the quiet life. 

They pull into the garage and the silence echoes once the engine cuts. It's over. Sure, monsters still exist, demons still threaten humanity, but they fought God and _won_. It feels final this time in a way nothing else ever has. Even after the averted apocalypse when they were still young and naïve, it hadn't really felt like an ending. Dean thinks he won't accept the world as safe until he sees Sam happy again. 

He looks over. Sam is already texting Eileen with that nervous smile on his face, so certain that she is on the other end to text back. A speech bubble pops up. 

Dean smiles to himself and leaves Sam to it, pulling himself out of the car and grabbing their bags from the trunk. He _likes_ Eileen in a way he never got a chance to like Jess. He has a good feeling about her. 

The bunker is warm and the lights are on. Mrs. Butters left a little of her magic behind for them despite her promise that they would be on their own when she left and Dean hopes she found her forest as she remembered it. He sits the bags down on the table and heads to the kitchen for a beer, not knowing and not caring if it's celebratory or mourning. 

A cling comes from the kitchen. Dean draws his gun. 

The lights are on here, too, and there's a low, shaky humming. Dean rounds the corner and his lungs turn to lead. He doesn't remember how to breathe in or move or speak. 

Cas stands in his kitchen with his back to him, a sandwich hanging out of his mouth while he reaches down for the butter knife he dropped- the clanging Dean heard. He's humming the theme song from that stupid show he likes, _The Greatest American Hero._

_Flying away on a wing and a prayer, who could it be? Believe it or not, I'm just me…_

The sound that finally crawls from Dean's throat is wounded and sharp. Cas whips around with that damned sandwich still in his mouth. His face does something complicated, emotion after emotion considered and discarded rapidly before settling on sheepishness. He takes a bite and sits the sandwich down on a plate on the counter. "I can taste peanut butter properly again," he says simply. "I missed it."

"I missed _you_ ," Dean blurts. He doesn't recognize his voice. 

Cas closes his eyes and Dean instantly regrets it. That shade of blue doesn't exist anywhere else and he _needs_ to see it now that he appreciates how fleeting the sight of it can be. "I know," he says lowly. "I was awake, in the Empty. Everything was. I heard every prayer you made, Dean."

Hadn't he wanted to be seen just this morning? Didn't he want to be _known_ just hours ago? But now, with the knowing right in front of him, he rocks back and forth on the balls of his feet, teetering on the edge of fight or flight. 

Cas, the angel, _his angel_ , steps into Dean's space and grips his chin. His fingers are grace-warm like he is healing, but he does nothing but hold Dean's gaze. His focus is heavy like a star and Dean cannot escape its pull. Cas says, "I _heard_ you, Dean. No one ever said the Righteous Man was a man without sin." 

"No one ever said _I'm_ the Righteous Man-" 

" _I did_ ," Cas growls. His mouth twists into something ugly but his fingers stay soft on Dean's jaw. " _I_ raised you from perdition, _I_ lionized you, _I_ loved you. What I say to you _matters_."

Dean gasps like he is drowning. "Promise me you're really here. If I'm dreaming, I can't- I _can't-_."

"I'm here. I always come when you call, it just takes a while sometimes."

The grief he's been holding in his chest cracks open and thrashes against the inside of his ribs. He feels the pain of it like the lancing of a wound and he basks in it. This is good pain, the purifying kind that he craves. _Sanctify me_ , he thinks. _Sanctify this._

"Love is holy on its own," Castiel murmurs because he knows Dean won't ask for sacrament on his own. 

"I don't want holy. I want-" his throat closes. Why can't he say it?

"Certainty," Cas finishes for him and Dean nods mutely. "I had never been sure of a single thing until I was given the order to rescue you. Until I touched your soul and understood what it meant to _feel_. I will never be more sure of anything than I am of loving you."

It's like the floodgates are opening. It hurts, of course, but it is cleansing, too. Dean leans forward with the floodwaters, grasps the back of Cas's neck and finally, _finally,_ kisses him.

Cas's mouth tastes like peanut butter.


End file.
